The ball took flight. It didn’t slam into his ankle like a line drive. It rose through the air like a pop fly.
“Catch it!” Wesley yelled at T.J.
T.J. positioned himself. He didn’t weave or float around the gym like I always did. He just planted himself under the ball and waited for it to drop.
“Tut’s going down.” Wesley looked me right in the eye. He didn’t even bother to throw at me, that’s how sure he was. “Tut’s toast.”
T.J. flicked his eyes toward Wesley. Just for a second. Then flicked back to the ball.
“About time too,” said Wesley. “Like your little dork of a brother needs a batting helmet.”
This time T.J. looked at Wesley. Turned his head and looked right at him. He still held his hands out. But he was looking at Wesley.
The ball dropped. Dropped right through his hands and bounced on the floor.
“Out!” called the ref.
T.J. nodded. He didn’t look at the ball or the ref. He kept looking at Wesley. Looked at him as he walked all the way to the Bombers’ jail.
And now it was just Wesley. Wesley against me.
He didn’t look worried. Not even a little bit. A minute ago, when Dillon had gone down, and it was me facing Wesley and the Sundances all by myself, I’d been worried.
But Wesley had his game face on. Wesley always had his game face on.
And now that game face was mad. Mad at T.J. for dropping the ball. Mad at me probably for just being born.
He snatched up a ball. Charged toward the center line like a bull.
I grabbed a ball too.
As I started to throw, all I could see was Wesley’s green dodgeball hurtling toward me, so fast it practically scorched the air. But I still gripped my own ball, and in that moment, that split second before Wesley’s ball hit me, I held it up. Held it between Wesley’s ball and my face.
Wesley had hurled a bullet, and when it slammed into my dodgeball, it ricocheted. Shot like a rocket straight up in the air, toward the rafters.
At first I was just glad I’d deflected it. But the Artful Dodgers were screaming at me.
“CAAAAATCH IIIIIIIT!” One voice echoed above the others. It was Coach Wilder.
I shot a panicked look at him. At his face, bulging and purple, his beefy hands flapping up, up, toward the dodgeball rocketing above me.
I dropped the ball in my hand. Gazed up at the ceiling. Tried to find Wesley’s ball in the buzzing gym lights. I finally located the small green dot. I wove across the gym, head back, eyes up, and positioned myself below it. As the dot reached its peak and started to fall, I kept my gaze locked on it, even though the ceiling lights nearly blinded me. The dot became bigger and bigger as it fell.
“TUUUUUUCKEEEEER! JUUUUUUUMP!”
This time it was Noah. His voice was a screech.
I glanced at Wesley just as another ball, red this time, came whizzing toward my feet. I did a little hop dance a nanosecond before the ball would’ve hit my ankle. It sailed past and slammed into the back wall.
I looked up again, and the green ball dropped against my chest.
What happened next was kind of a blur. But I had it. I had the ball in my arms.
And then, just as I was about to let myself breathe, it squirted back out. Looped right out of my arms.
And with a dull thud of my heart, I knew it was over. I knew that as soon as the ball dropped, as soon as it touched the floor, I’d be out. The game would be over. The helmet would be Wesley’s. And there’d be nothing I could do about it.
But the ball, the green dodgeball, hadn’t hit the floor yet.
I dove. Dove at the hard gym floor, my elbows hitting, then my belly. I skidded across the wood, my arms outstretched—
—and caught the ball in both hands.
And before it could pop out again, I rolled to my back and hugged it tight to my chest.
“OOOOOOUUUUUUUT!” shouted the ref. “GAME OVER!”
Thirty-eight
I was wrong about the universe. I owed it an apology. It wasn’t working against me. It just needed time to warm up. Probably I caught it off-guard when I decided to get athletic all of a sudden, and for a little while there, it didn’t know what to do. Probably it had to recover before it kicked things in gear.
But when it did, it kicked things.
After the Artful Dodgers mobbed me at center court, after we spent a full five minutes whooping and jumping in a wild clump that even Dillon got into—and Noah, and Mrs. Frazee, and even Coach Wilder a little bit—after the crowd leaped to its feet and yelled and stomped the bleachers, and after Mom and Beech and Sam’s grandpa and Emma and a bunch of Artful Dodger parents stormed the court to cheer and hug us, too, after all that, the gym settled down, and Mr. Petrucelli wheeled his presentation table to center court.
We gathered round, pink-cheeked and out of breath.
The Artful Dodgers stood on one side. Dillon and Sam stood beside their grandpa, who had looped one arm around each of them and looked so proud, I thought for sure his chest would explode right through his neatly pressed work shirt. Beech leaned against me, his pillowcase cape tangled between him and my legs. Mom stood behind us and couldn’t stop ruffling our hair, which usually I might not like in public, but now I didn’t mind. Noah and Mrs. Frazee pressed in beside us.
The Backcourt Bombers stood opposite. Out of sportsmanship, I guess, although Wesley wasn’t looking like much of a sport.
T.J. stood closest to the Artful Dodgers, way away from Wesley. I glanced at him and he met my eyes. He raised his chin at me in a half nod.
I nodded back.
Coach Wilder had brought in his sound system for our pregame music, and now he handed the microphone to Mr. Petrucelli.
“Thank you.” Mr. Petrucelli faced the crowd. “As you all know, this dodgeball tournament isn’t just the highlight of our annual school carnival. For the students at Earhart Middle, it’s the highlight of the entire school year. They each dream of one day being the Last Player Standing, and this year, to make that honor even more special, one of our students, Wesley Banks, out of his love for his school and his respect for athletic competition, has generously purchased a prize with his own money.”
Mr. Petrucelli paused to let the crowd clap politely.
“And now here’s Wesley,” he said, “to present that prize to this year’s Last Player Standing—Tucker MacBean.”
The crowd cheered.
Wesley shook his head in disgust. He strutted up to the table in his jumbo basketball shoes, grabbed the helmet from the table, and started to shove it at my gut.
But then I guess he realized the whole gym was watching him. He shot a quick glance at all those people. He held up the helmet so everyone could see, flashed a big smile, leaned over, and with a big flourish, placed it on Beecher’s head.
Mrs. Stephenson, English teacher and yearbook sponsor, rushed forward with her camera. “We need a shot for the yearbook,” she said.
Next thing I knew, Wesley and I were crowded together with Beech, Wesley’s hand gripping my shoulder, his other hand patting Beech on top of his helmet.
“Inspirational!” said Mrs. Stephenson.
Her flash exploded in my eyes.
By the time I’d blinked away the spots, Wesley was gone. I guess he could only take so much inspiration.
“Congratulations, Tucker.” Mr. Petrucelli stretched out his arm and gave me a serious principal handshake, but when he looked at me, it wasn’t a serious look at all. He was smiling. Really smiling. Like he wanted to, not because he was the principal and he had to.
Then he did something weird. He turned and nodded at Noah and Mrs. Frazee.
Noah motioned his head toward Audiovisual Club, and I heard the first hint of music. It started low, then grew louder as the gym itself grew darker.
The music swelled to a peak, and in that instant, the video flashed on.
I stared at it. It was our assembly. The video from our assembly. Well, not all of
it. Just the last part, the part that had been cut short, the part Earhart Middle hadn’t gotten to see.
The part about Beanboy.
Audiovisual Club beamed it onto a screen in the gym.
The crowd had gone still, watching the video, and now I heard gasps. A murmur swept through the bleachers.
“It was him,” I heard someone say.
“All those pages in the hallway—it was him.”
“He’s the secret comic book artist.”
The crowd cheered.
They knew. Earhart Middle knew. I’d won a (prestigious! national!) contest, and at last they knew.
In the flickering light from the video, I saw Mrs. Frazee smile.
“So it was you,” I said. “You were the one who taped my Beanboy pages all over the school.”
Mrs. Frazee shook her head in surprise. Her earrings clanked against her cheeks.
“It wasn’t me. It’s the greatest performance art Earhart Middle has ever seen, and I couldn’t be more proud.” She gave my arm a two-handed proud-art-teacher squeeze. “But it wasn’t me.”
I blinked. “It wasn’t?”
“Nah, she didn’t do it.” Dillon reached over and gave me a friendly shoulder punch. About punched my shoulder into my chest cavity. “It was me.”
Now I really blinked. I stood there, my mouth open.
Dillon shrugged. “Sam said I had to. She did all the copying on Grandpa’s Xerox machine at home, the one he uses for farm accounts. But she made me tape them all up because I’m taller.”
Sam caught me looking at her through the flickering light and pierced me with a glare, a Don’t-Think-I-Was-Doing-You-Any-Big-Favors-’Cause-I-Wasn’t-Beanboy glare. She crossed her arms over her army jacket. “I had to do something to keep him out of trouble,” she said.
I nodded. “I know. But thanks.”
She nodded too, and her glare faded. Her arms unclenched just a little. “No problem,” she said.
The light fluttered, and the music rose to one last echoing chord. I turned toward the video.
And there on the screen . . .
. . . was a poster. A poster I’d never laid eyes on until that very moment.
The video ended. The music faded. The gym lights blazed on.
The bleachers were abuzz. And even though I couldn’t see much, I could hear. Everyone clapped for the video, but then my finely tuned auditory senses picked up bits of conversation:
“He did that? Tucker MacBean? Somebody we actually know?”
“He won that contest, and now he’s some kind of, I don’t know, international comic book artist or something.”
“And he’s just walking around our school, like a regular kid.”
And as I stood there blinking, trying to regain my vision in the sudden brightness, I thought I saw Caveman.
I figured my eyes were just playing tricks on me again, figured once I could actually see something, Caveman would be gone.
But he wasn’t.
I rubbed the glare out of my eyes, and there he was.
Caveman.
Standing next to Mr. Petrucelli in the Amelia M. Earhart Middle School gym, his wild black hair fluttering, his Hawaiian shirt stretched over the mounds of his shoulders.
And he had legs. Actual legs. There they were, two tree trunks poking out of a pair of khaki shorts, black hairs bristled up all over them.
“Dude,” he said to me. “Couldn’t get the actual comic book. Won’t be out till summer.” He looked kind of sweaty and out of breath. Probably because he’d just said twelve entire words in a row and he wasn’t used to that kind of exertion.
“Not a problem,” I said. “The poster was—wow.”
It really was.
Caveman turned to leave. “Thanks, Mr. P,” he said over his shoulder.
Mr. Petrucelli nodded. “Good to see you again, Kevin.”
Kevin? I stared at him, at the back of his Hawaiian shirt ambling its way out of the gym. Caveman’s name was Kevin?
Mr. Petrucelli thanked everyone for coming, then rolled his presentation table out of the gym. The crowd clanked its way down the bleachers and trickled out. The Artful Dodgers melted away with their parents. My mom stood off to one side, talking to Sam’s grandpa and Coach Wilder and Mrs. Frazee. Beech stayed right by my side, his cape tangled in my legs, just soaking up all the pure happiness of having that helmet on his head.
“Congratulations, Tucker.”
A silvery voice echoed through the nearly empty gym.
I looked up and there was Emma, beaming her mind-jamming superpower on me. And even after a few games of dodgeball, even with her hair falling out of her sporty ponytail, she was still the shiniest person in all of Wheaton, all of Kansas, probably all the universe. She’d found my black cap and now she held it in her perfect hand.
“I thought the phantom comic book artist was you,” she said. “Every time I saw a new page, I wondered. I knew it had to be somebody special.”
And then she did something really surprising. She revealed another superpower, a power even more forceful than her mind-jamming shininess.
She put her hands on my shoulders, leaned toward my cheek—
—and kissed it.
And as I stood there, completely paralyzed inside my own body, the imprint of her kiss burning a warm, toasty hole right through my cheek, she started to put the snug black hat on my head. Then she stopped and pulled it onto her own head instead, right onto her perfect, shiny hair.
“Well, congratulations again,” she said.
Then she leaned down and looked under the helmet, looked Beech in the eye.
“You look amazing,” she told him. “You’re a total superhero.”
She kissed Beecher’s cheek, too, gave me one last mind-jamming smile, and trotted toward the exit, my cap still on her head, beaming her shininess all over the gym.
Beech stared after her, his hand touching the toasty warm place where she’d kissed him. The helmet fell down over his face, and he pushed it back so he could see her.
“I superhero,” he said. “She say I superhero.”
I nodded. “You’ve got the helmet. You’re the superhero.”
He looked up at me. The helmet wobbled back and forth. “Really?”
“Really,” I said. “You, Beecher MacBean, are the greatest superhero I know.”
One
My best friend, Noah, was reading over my shoulder. “Weird how she’s always got it in for little kids,” he said.
“Yeah.” I flipped the page.
Advertisement. Flipped again. Another ad. Flipped. Too many pages.
“You went past it,” said Noah.
I flipped back.
Beep-beep. Beep-beep.
“Uh, Tucker?” Noah waved his wristwatch in my face. “Beecher’s bus.”
I tore my eyes from the blazing school building. Tried to focus on Noah’s watch. He was still waving it around, so I couldn’t see what time zone he had it set for, but I knew it was synchronized to the atomic clock at the Naval Observatory and updated continuously by satellite. When Noah’s watch beeped, it wasn’t kidding.
I smoothed H2O Submerged, Episode Nine: Cataclysm shut. Shot a glance at the back counter. If I was going to do this thing, I had to do it now.
Noah clicked his watch off and swung his bassoon case over his shoulder. Don’t ask what a bassoon is. No one knows. I’ve been Noah’s best friend since kindergarten, and I’m still not sure. It looks like . . . actually, it looks like Noah. Some people look like their dogs. Noah looks like his band instrument—skinny, perfect posture, shiny and dark.
I grabbed my backpack, and we threaded our way through aisles of comics, through the dust specks that floated on the few rays of light that had managed to beat their way inside. It had been raining all afternoon, and the damp air drew out the shop’s wet-dog aroma.
We reached the counter, where Caveman sat hunkered over a graphic novel, his Hawaiian shirt stretched over the mountains of his shoulders,
his wild black hair fluttering as he turned a page. He truly was a caveman. A caveman with a Wonder Woman lunchbox collection.
Case File: Caveman
Status: Uncertain. (Hero? Unlikely. He’s a little grumpy, but he doesn’t fit the villain profile, either. And he doesn’t like anybody enough to be their sidekick.)
Base: Caveman Comics
Superpower: The superhuman ability to know every single thing that is going on in his shop without ever paying attention to it.
Superweapon: Possibly an extra set of eyeballs concealed somewhere on his body. That would be my guess.
Real Name: Unknown. (I mean, no self-respecting parent actually names their kid Caveman. Do they?)
CASE FILE: INCOMPLETE
I pushed H2O toward him, reached into my shoe, and pulled out three dollars and twenty-one cents. I clanked it onto the counter. Caveman dinged the cash register open and slid the money in. He didn’t even look at it. He knew I had the exact change. He slipped H2O into a plastic sack, handed me the receipt, and went back to his novel.
I swallowed. A nervous tang prickled my throat. I’d been working up my courage since Noah and I first stepped into Caveman Comics—no, before that, before we left school even—and if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t get another chance till next month.
Noah gave me an encouraging thumbs-up.
“So. Caveman.” I slid the sack off the counter. Casually. You know, so it wouldn’t look like I was making a big deal out of it or anything. “You ever think about deliveries?”
Caveman licked a finger. Turned a page. Didn’t look up. “Nope.”
At least, I think that’s what he said. It was more of a grunt than an actual word. Which partially explains his name.
I took another breath. “It’s just this idea I had. Deliveries, I mean. Like Pizza Rocket, only with comics instead of, you know, pizza. You should think about it.”
Caveman turned another page. “Nope.”
Nope, he wouldn’t think about it? Or nope, he’d already thought about it, decided it was a bad idea, and was never going to think about it again?
Cool Beans Page 13